Topics Knowledge

Question Hi! I just read the five-part series New York Times published about anosognosia (the condition of not knowing what we don't know), written by Errol Morris. Since finishing the series, my existential angst is off the charts! I am haunted by the unknown unknowns, by questions I don't even know to ask. This is driving me nuts! So my question for the philosophers is: How do philosophers live with the great unknowable unknowns? Doesn't it drive you crazy that you don't even know that you don't know something? Does doing philosophy help anosognosia, or just make it worse? Throw me a lifeline here, guys!

Accepted:
June 29, 2010

Comments

You’ve posed an interesting set of questions. Philosophers generally go to the primary sources when dealing with any question. In this case, the research begins with the word "anosognosia" and the NY Times series. We quickly discover that "anosognosia" is a compound word coming from the transliterated Greek "nosos" meaning disease and "gnosis" meaning knowledge. The conventional connotation (dictionary definition) is medical rather than either psychological or philosophical. A patient suffering from anosognosia suffers from a physical impairment that she or he does not acknowledge.

The NY Times series begins with an entertaining story of a bank robber who believed that he would become invisible to surveillance cameras by rubbing his face with lemon juice! His arrest was a forgone conclusion. So what explains such irrational behavior? Enter psychology into the picture, specifically the so-called Dunning-Kruger Effect, meaning "our incompetence masks our ability to recognize our incompetence." Subsequent parts offer additional evidence concerning both the medical and psychological phenomenon, including an account of President Woodrow Wilson’s anosognosia following a stroke, and a fascinating account of a medical disorder known as "somatoparaphrenia."

The series author begins his epilogue as follows: "I have to admit my fondness for the Dunning-Kruger Effect. But is it a metaphor for existence? For the human condition? That we’re all dumb and delusional? So dumb and delusional that we can never grasp that fact?"

I think not. While anosognosia and the Dunning-Kruger Effect are interesting phenomena, and while there are conceptual overlaps between various types of philosophical inquiry and these phenomena, philosophers have not overtly engaged either. Further, philosophy not only admits to the existence of the unknown, but in some sense embraces the unknown. Contemporary philosophers largely affirm the proposition that knowledge in any area of human endeavor evolves, that is, develops over time. Which is to say that knowledge is always and inevitably in process, and that there is no reason to think that there is an end point. The unknown is in this sense a fact, a reality: alternatively stated, there is nothing epistemologically vexing about the unknown. Rather, regardless of subject-matter, whether physics or ethics, the unknown is a problem to be solved.